Abstract

In this paper, we shall focus on the characteristics of rhythm in modern Arab poetry through Mahmud Darwich’s Poem “Rita and the Rifle”. We aim at getting acquainted with a specific aesthetic experience tightly linked to modernism. We will shed light on the definition of rhythm by both ancient philosophers and critics and modern Arab and Western critics only to realise the ambiguity and mercurial nature of the term. It becomes more difficult to define this term in relation to the modern poem which we briefly defined in a way that serves our ends. We shall focus on rhythm from a prosodic perspective for its falling short of rhythmic richness at some moments and its inclination towards rhythmic modelling at other moments. Then we shall examine the potential of the syllabic and musical approaches as two modern approaches in contributing to rhythm. We shall also examine the potential of the first approach to yield variant and various rhythmic patterns based on the number and type of syllables. Delving into the second approach, we shall focus on the rhythmic variation created by the binary of lightness and heaviness on the one hand and that of violence and tranquillity on the other hand. Our ultimate objective is to come to the point that rhythm is multiple and not steady and uniform. And this requires the contribution of a multi-disciplinary research group composed of musicians, physicians, psychologists, anthropologists, and highly developed research laboratories to grasp a tiny bit of this ambiguous term.